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A short update from our sources about the future Panasonic lenses. Panasonic should release three new and two reworked lenses within 2011. One of the new lenses is the 25mm f/1.4 that will be released soon. Another two new lenses should be announced in August (one wide angle lens and a tele lens). Two current lenses will be updated. The 7-14mm lens (with OIS) and a second lens (the source didn’t tell me what lens).
Reminder: Panasonic will have an announcement in April and we hope to receive more info about that soon! Olympus will announce new lenses in late May/early June.
Links:
The current Panasonic 7-14mm f/4.0 at [shopcountry 14822].
The current 25mm f/1.4 Four Thirds lens at [shopcountry 16340]
52 Responses
For now, i only need a m4/3 14-50mm f2.8 with O.I.S for the Gh2 or AF100… Pleaseeeee!
Is the announcement of the rumored 12-50 f/2.5-3.3 OIS also imminent according to your sources?
Boy, I hope the 12-50mm is still on the table! That is exactly what I’m waiting for and would make a great walk-around travel lens.
mmmm 12-50 is what I want. Or just 12 prime at F2
Why so many wide angle and tele lenses ?
We need a bright zoom ! Still no equivalent to the 17-50 2.8 on my dslr.
Plus the prices… I’m thinking about selling my GH2…again.
If you’re complaining about prices, take a look at what the current zooms cost and multiply it by 1.5-3 to get an idea on what a faster zoom would cost.
I know, I’m saying that most of m4/3 lenses are overpriced.
Oh Joy! A 7-14mm with OIS? Really? It’s $950 without. If they take the Nikon pricing route, instead of the old one dropping, the new one would just be more expensive 😛
Still OIS at 7mm? What are they hoping for? 1/2 second handheld sharpness?
Here’s hoping the rework can bring that price down a little (or at least make that a brighter lens).
Why the fascination with kit zoom focal lengths? Can’t stand them myself.
I’m very excited about the 25/1.4 EXCEPT that it’s coming from Panny. So, if they announce in April, will it actually be available on store shelves in the States — when? August? October??
I would love them to announce a 7-14 OIS. Then maybe I could buy the 7-14 mki for cheaper! The other lens they should probably rework is the 45-200. It was an OK lens when it first shipped, but it is a weak lens (I don’t think reworking the 45-200 is a priority, but the post says they’ll reword another lens besides the 7-14. Not sure what else they might do. Maybe the 45mm??? THat’s already a good lens. Same on the 20/1.7. The other options are too new, so I’d bet they’d be reworking the 45-200).
With respect to lenses, Panasonic’s record of delivering them timely after announcements is pretty good, especially when compared to the competition – including the DSLR manufacturers. Initial availability may have some shortages, but this is normal, as the demand is difficult to calculate. Up to now, I could have all my desired Panasonic lenses within my limits of a reasonable time frame after announcements (a few months).
Recently, I was even positively surprised that the 2.5/14mm and the fisheye were in the stores very quickly. The worst example is probably the 100-300mm, which was announced in 2009, but available in late 2010.
Same here. The only thing I expect from the new 7-14mm OIS is a price drop on the non OIS 7-14mm.
I’ll take one please! 😉
Don’t really know how to wait until August for a true wide angle prime, especially without knowing how wide it will be! Hopefully CV or Olly get there sooner. Wanting a 12 mm, at least f2.5 for travel photography. That and a portrait lens, I’ll be OK for a while.
Given the former record of Olympus, it is highly unlikely, that they will be quicker than Panasonic. Additionally, I would not call the situation with the CV lenses as exemplary, as the shortage of the .95 Nokton shows.
Normally there are fewer surprises in lenses as they take longer to develop and produce. One can assume that the tele lens being referred to is a new mirror lens much like the 500mm/f8 or 250mm/f5.6 mirror lenses of old but smaller versions for m4/3. I hope it is the smaller one as would fit well on a GF2 or small m4/3 camera. Is it possible to incorporate OIS in a mirror lens as the 500mm lens would be a handful to hold steady otherwise?
The question of a new wide angle is puzzling as there have not been any rumors of a 12mm/f2 from Pany? My guess it is the 12-50/f2.5-3.3 lens which was rumored to be in the works before any of the other above mentioned lenses. Maybe Pany has revised this lens to be a little shorter ie go only to 42mm on the tele end as this would enable them to keep the lens smaller as doesn’t the size advantage begin to disappear from 40mm and above? Since the rumor says WA then maybe a fast 12-24mm lens?
Wides are more needed than tele’s as you can use all kinds of legacy lenses for tele, whereas wides are just not available. If they release both a 12/2.0 and 12-50/2.5 it will be hard to decide between them! Maybe indeed the should make it a 12-40 if that simplifies design and gives better chance at 2.5 all the way.
What frank said.
I suspect that they’ll rework the 20mm lens. It could be improved by faster focusing (internal?) and more silent operation to make it useful for video. With those improvements, they can make a good lens gooder 🙂
It would also allow them to keep the price high for what is ‘just’ a normal prime lens.
great! and then let them say the 20 has remained the same optically although it is not and has become a cheaper to make version that renders our current 20’s an instant classic!
just speculating…
+1
So they put I.S. into the 7-14, but the 25/1,4 is rumored to come without? Oh well.
+1
makes a whole lot of sense.
Not ;).
Probably internal focusing on the 20mm or smaller or faster superzoom.
Happy to hear that wide angle has passed “under consideration” :).
It could also be the 45 mm without the leica branding, and perhaps a little faster…
Please, a mid fast zoom like a 14-35 f:2 or similar
Without a fast portrait prime the whole system, becomes more and more like a half baked idea. Big heavy zooms for petite bodies doesn’t make sense, nor does getting fifty feet away from your subject with a 100-300 in order to diffuse the background. Making a 25 1.4 when there is already a 20 1.7 in lieu of a 40 1.4 is just plain silly. The 25 should have been made first, then after a 40 1.4 and 14 2.5, they could start filling in the holes with other things. Only a complete amateur would omit making a wide, normal and portrait prime at the beginning of a camera system. The 45 2.8 macro does not count as a portrait lens, as it’s DOF is like a 5.6 lens on full frame sensor and akin to shooting with a full frame kit zoom at the long end.
I think all these people screaming for 2.8 zooms, should try mounting a Zuiko 12-60 on their GF1 or G2, EP2 etc. and carry it around for a day, then see how much they want to lug around a lens like that on a daily basis. In order to keep things small and portable, fast zooms for M4/3 are going to need short zoom ranges, like 12-25 25-50 otherwise, we may as well go back to Nikon or Canon, as the only real advantage M4/3 has over them is size and Live View. Without the size advantage, not much point, as I don’t see panasonic having the fastest Live View AF forever and in all honesty, the lenses are mostly a compromise with so many computer corrections, that testing sites like Photozone, won’t even rate them. Blah, blah, blah and so on. 🙂
So much ignorance in just one post…pretty obvious who is the amateur repeating nonsense he’s read on the interent rather than actually knowing how real professionals use real equipment. Among the dozens of pro shooters who I deal with at work every day, the Canon 85 f/1.8 is considered the classic working portait lens, and the best portrait apertures with it are considered to be f/4-f/8. Wide open the backgrounds are too smeary and subject focus is too uncertain…so an 80mm equivalent with the DOF characteristics of an f/5.6 lens on full frame could count as an excellent portrait lens in the hands of somebody who actually knows how to use it.
For the record, for all the stone amateurs out there saying this or that isn’t fast enough, in 20 years I have NEVER sold an 85 f/1.2 Canon lens to a working pro photographer. Sell a couple a year to enthusiasts with more money than sense who insist on paying 5x the price no matter how much I, and any Canon shooting pros who happen to be in the shop, try and convince them to save their cash.
m4/3 system has all the things you say it should – normal lens (20mm is normal to the 4/3 sensor), great cheap portrait lenses (I use OM50 f/1.8), and now a wide (I might get the 14 when it starts coming through our store used). I can buy any photo gear I want in the world at a substantial discount, and haven’t touched my really nice Canon kit since I got EP2 with kit zoom, Panny 20mm, and the OM50 for less than $40.
I was an amateur, 30 years ago and I’m still amazed at the ignorance of people that work at camera shops and parrot the things they read on the Internet and hear from so called pros that frequent their stores. I make my statements based on experience unlike teenagers that work in camera stores that think they are supposed to be knowledgable because of their job title.
As far as the rest of your dribble goes, Most lenses are pretty equal a 5.6, so not much point in using an 85 mm lens at that aperture, as your really not gaining much if anything over a zoom lens. As far a shooting a low light wedding, with a manual focus lens goes, well, I used to do it, but my aging eyes prefer AF, so I don’t want to use MF lens when I have a AF body. Anything else you need correcting on there, boy?
You’re still an amateur, at least when it comes to being a human being. Congratulations on addressing a 53 year old man of African-Canadian descent (ie me) as “boy.” You should be very proud of yourself.
Most of the probably 15 or so zoom lenses I’ve owned that cover 85mm efl have exhibited some distortion in that area as it’s typically near the long end of a “normal” zoom or the short end of a tele zoom. Most of the 150 or so lenses I’ve owned were better performers stopped down a bit, so the true ignoramus is the person who can’t see the difference between using an 85 f/1.8 stopped down to f/5.6 and a slow zoom “wide open” at 85mm f/5.6. Your “clients” (if indeed you have any) must be very happy with your work.
Been in photo retail for 23 years now, after a youthful career as a 1st and 2nd Assistant Camera Opfor films. Proud to say I’ve been in a well-paying, no-commission shop for the past decade, where my only goal at work is to help people buy the right things for them in spite of blowhard idiots who stand around and blab about what is or isn’t “good” or “pro” or “amateur,” and I proudly steer folks to the m4/3 system when it fits their needs at an economical price.
No one reading these comments can tell what anyone else’s race is, so lets leave the race card out of any disagreements.
Well, Canard my friend, when you go off and try to insult someone from the get go, then you should at least be mature enough to expect it back, if not, which is apparently the case, at least judging from your last writing anyway, then in my book, you are acting like a little boy (black, white, red, brown yellow, blue) makes no difference to me, there, boy! Want respect, act respectable. Pretty simple formula, isn’t it. Shall we continue? Every portrait and wedding photographer I know has or wants an 85 1.2 or an 85 1.4, so people up in Canada must be different from the rest of us, at least according to you. I couldn’t imagine using an 85 in a dim church (no flash allowed) at a smaller aperture than 2.0, so I’m just not in the same league as you, being able to hand hold a short tele at 5.6 or 8, at 1/15 of sec or something like that. You must be amazingly steady.
My whole point in this, even though I didn’t state it, is that, with the GH2, Panasonic is now a capable wedding and portrait photographers tool, but we need a fast portrait lens, first.
Now, shall we give your ego a break and call it a wash, or do you wish to continue?
Then you have no excuse to not know that extreme retrofocus design required by very long flange back distance compared to sensor/image circle size made all wide angle Four Thirds lenses bigger&heavier than they would need to be otherwise.
I suggest you to dust out some of those cobwebs from your attic and for your claimed experience from the time before internet or anything digital you should find some notations how originally developing any kind wide angle lenses for SLRs was such a long road and in the end resulting big and heavy lenses compared to what smaller flange back distance rangefinder cameras had already decades earlier.
So funny, my brother a proffesional photograper for more than 30 years, just bought the Canon 85mm f/1.2 Sometimes even pros want really shallow DOF! And besides, its a great lens.
Photozone are the one and only site that do not give a rating to the m43 lenses that I have come across, as they say that computer corrections are applied by default. What are the other sites to which you are referring?
Many of the zooms for APS-C and full frame cameras. particularly the auper-wide zooms and also wide to tele zooms(e.g 18-200mm), suffer from significant levels of distortion and high chromatic aberrations (as well as distinctly mediocre MTF results at longer focal lengths e.g the Diwa labs results for Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM).It should also be remembered that CA correction is performed by various Nikon and Canon cameras.
Thus I find it a bit strange that certain people choose to single out some of the m43 lenses as requiring digital correction when a lot of the lenses from the opposition are far from perfection.
I agree that it is about time to have a portrait lens, possibly 40mm f1.4 or 1.7.
Not true. Photozone are amazed how good the internal processor correction is.
Not true? Maybe you should take a little trip to Photozone and read a review on M4/3 lenses and tell us what the rating is. When I look at that site it says they don’t rate lenses that are auto corrected, as it wouldn’t be fair to other lens makers that rely on optical design, rather than computer corrections.
Hmm, why wouldn’t that be “fair”? Why use the word “fair” anyway? It’s just another technology. Would one not be allowed aspheric elements just because it is not fair some have the technology and others don’t? At least in the 70’s and 80’s…
I don’t know photozone, but the arguments that m4/3 lenses won’t be tested because of that is silly. I can’t believe a serious site would really act like that.
@frank So, how do you propose to rate them? Level of distortion is part of the rating. Should they take that out from the evaluation for the non-corrected lenses? That would be silly!
This is a reposting of some information I provide in another forum.
I have watched the complaints about using software to correct for lens distortions as if an inferior product is being sold.
This is not true.
In fact, the product is in many ways superior. Given the same amount of engineering for a “distorted” lens and a “flat” lens, the “distorted” lens will have Better CA, better resolution, and brighter edges, and focus more sharply over greater distance ranges. Of course, Software is necessary.
One real issue is that the universality of the lens is compromised, use the lens on a camera that does not have software to correct for the distortion and the image is barrel distorted. This can be easily corrected with post processing, but it is an inconvenience. Also, If you buy system lenses that go with the camera then this is not an issue.
The most common argument that I have run into is that the “distorted” lenses are inferior because the lose photons by cropping the image.
Are photons being lost by cropping?
Yes, but photons are also lost when one tries to force a spherical image on a flat plane. It really doesn’t make any difference if the loss occurs in the lens or on the sensor. (Ignoring the additional loss from photons hitting obliquely on the sensor and therefore are more likely to be lost in the gaps of the sensor diodes or be reflected. This problem is worse with flat plane sensors. )
Lets look at what the lens does. The natural or “purest” and most accurate image a lens could produce would resolve on a spherical surface, like the retina in the eye. Photon distribution is evenly spread out from all parts of the lens.
Now when the image is forced to focus on flat plane a camera lens must shape the natural spherical cone passing through the lenses to resolve on a flat surface. Optically the edges of the light cone is “distorted” to focus at a further distance than at the center of the sensor.
This process reduces the number of photons that hit the edges of the sensor, compared to the center of the sensor. This reduction occurs because the density of the photons hitting the surface varies to the inverse square of the distance the image is resolved. For example, if the edges of the sensor were twice as far away from the focal center of the lens, compared to the center of the sensor, then number of photons hitting the edges of the sensor would be reduced by a quarter per square area measure on the sensor. These are “lost” photons.
The problem is not the lens, it is the sensor. Eventually some camera manufacture is going to make the brave step and make a spherical shaped sensor.
Your very long comment is entirely based on the assumption that The Master’s comment has something to do with the quality of software correction. Unless I am missing something that isn’t the case at all and his point is related to the difficulty in rating software corrected and other lenses using the same rating system.
Well if 20MM F1.7 get reworked that means…. the price of 1st gen 20mm will go down! Otherwise the current price of 20mm is rediciulously high!
For me to be interested in the m43 at all they need to produce bright and compact 12-50. And it should be sold as kit with the GH3/G3.
Same goes for Oly and E-P3/etc.
Though my E-620 still works pretty well, and I do not plan any changes for at least couple of years.
Hi viad,
You said,
“Your very long comment is entirely based on the assumption that The Master’s comment has something to do with the quality of software correction”
I got the impression that Master did not think m4/3 lenses were not outstanding because they require software to correct the image . He listed photozones refusal to evaluate the lenses as evidence of the lenses shortcomings.
How do you rate such a lens?
The answer is to look at the finished product.
photozone’s refusal to review lenses that use software to correct for image distortion is simply an indication that they have not kept up with technology. If they want evaluate lenses for the use on film, which has to be flat, then their policy is correct. If the lenes are being used on a digital sensor that has image processing, the policy does not make sense. All that matters is the finished product.
I also wanted to make the point that most of the problems result from trying to project an image on a flat plane, rather than a spherical surface.
I found your comments informative and I think they are correct. You have to rate the end result.
My bad. Didn’t see The Master’s original comment.
On the rating issue though – I still don’t see how you are going to rate corrected and not corrected using the same system. Given that Photozone voices inter-brand opinions, how do we account for the correction in the final result?
Four words: Fast moderate tele lens.
40mm f1.4 anyone?
Voigtländer Classic 40/1.4
Hi viad,
You asked,
“how do we account for the correction in the final result?”
I do not think as an end user it makes any difference if the corrections made to shape a spherically projected image on to a flat sensor are achieved in the lens or via software. The same tests apply, is the image sharp across the lens? How fast is the lens? Is the final image distorted? How bright are the edges of the image at various fstops? Is there CA.? Is there any color imparted? How bad is flaring? What does the Bokeh look like? Does it focus silently (for video), How fast can it focus? How good is the stabilization? How close can the lens focus? How do these measures change with focus distance?
One real problem is for manufactures of lenses that wish to make universal lenses. Software corrections produce better images than in lens corrections, given the same amount of engineering into the design of the lens. Unfortunately this ignores the engineering required in software development, which is an area of expertise that third party lens manufactures are presently behind the curve in.
I also believe that Panasonic and Olympus would not be that willing to share the necessary engineering information allowing third party lenses to be used on their cameras. I would imagine the price to join the m4/3 club to be pretty pricey. Why have their market share of lens sales reduced? There is no incentive and it preserves a kind of monopoly.
Is this bad?
It will cost us more money for better lenses.
Is this bad?
If the manufactures use the extra income to continue improving the field of photography, then it is good. If the manufactures us the extra income to help rebuild Japan, it is good. If the manufactures use the extra income to provide bonuses to overly compensated managers in privileged positions, (like the U.S. financial system), it is bad.
Convinced me. Agreed 🙂
Accumulating all the rumors we’ve heard.
25mm 1.4
12-50mm 2.5 – 3.3
250mm mirror lens
7-14mm reworked with ois
second reworked lens …. who knows but Id like that 45mm to be 1.4 =)